“Sorry, but we cannot complete your phone call as dialed.”

That was the sound blaring out of the speaker of my phone. Robotic words that hinted at something terrible. It was good company for the pain in my stomach that made me regret my choice of food on the plane.

No matter how many times I tried to call my family. No matter which person I called. It was always the same response.

“Cannot be complete your phone call as dialed.”

Standing there at the airport, that was how I knew things had gone horribly wrong. My parents were older. They just never turned off their phone. Even my brother, who might have done it as a prank, would never turn off his phone. Especially when he was supposed to be at the airport to pick me up. There was just no sign of him.

“Let’s see…” I mumbled to myself as I scrolled to his phone number. There was that typical wait before the phone dialed out.

One ring, two rings, three; it went all the way to the pickup of his voicemail.

“Hey! This is David. Can’t come to the phone right now, so leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can!”

A quiet curse word pulled out of my mouth, but then the message continued.

“And if you are my darling sister, Ava, remember that time you were supposed to pick me up from soccer practice? Yeah. You can do what you told me to do that day. Love you!”

The beep echoed in my ear and I cursed even louder into the phone.

“You little shit.” I said into the phone. “Fine. I’ll remember this.”

That was all I said before I hung up the phone. I remembered fully what I had said when we were in High School when I refused to pick him up after soccer practice.

Get a cab.

My hands clenched in annoyance before I sighed. I knew people were staring at me as I stood there. My phone in one hand and my backpack loosely hanging over my other arm. I slid the backpack over my shoulder as I tried to dial for a taxi.

“We are receiving a higher number than expected calls. Please call back later.”

I tried another company and received nearly the same message. A third and fourth all gave me the same answer. The one person I managed to reach actually told me that the wait for a taxi would be about four hours.

“Great. Just great.” I muttered into my phone. Of course, the day my brother decided to be a pain would be the day that the taxi companies would be super busy.

That was not what I had expected when I arrived by plane, either. I just wanted to go home, but it looked like I was going to have to settle for finding a room for the night. I sighed and thought to myself about how everything had ended up like this.

I had been on a backpacking trip with some friends through the Carpathian Mountains. One final hurrah before we all returned to mundane lives and followed our families into being respectable members of society. Heck, one of us even had a corporate job already lined up.

Not me.

Not that it mattered right now.

I sighed and shouldered my backpack more firmly. Striding past the anxious faces, I was quickly feeling like there was something off about things around me. The more I walked, the more I realized that the airport itself was strange.

There were multitudes of people lining up. It was like everyone was trying to board a plane to get out of the city, or perhaps even the country. I could even hear a few people begging the few attendants to help them purchase tickets. People threw out place names that did not make any sense to me. Places like Alaska or Easter Island.

Once or twice might have been normal, but it was like everyone was suddenly gearing up for a trip somewhere obscure.

“So weird.” I mumbled to myself as I stepped outside.

The weather was surprisingly warm for this time of year. Warmth that was accompanied by a strange drizzle of rain.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk and suddenly realized that it was not rain. Or at least, not how rain was supposed to be.

Little impacts hit my skin. It felt like hail, but there was nothing cold about whatever was falling from the sky. Nor could I see them on the ground. I stretched out my hand to catch one of the droplets. The sight of the “droplets” surprised me. They looked like little crystal specks but were far too warm to be snow or hail. Each was no bigger than a grain of rice. And each one that struck my hand dissolved into water before pouring between my fingers.

“What the fuck?” I quietly swore as I looked heavenward. I knew this was not how the rain worked. At least not on Earth, anyway.

It was just an unending downpour of this solid rain for as far as I could see.

I also quickly noticed that I was the only one standing out underneath it. Everyone else was cowering away from it on the sidewalk. They were all trying to get as close to the buildings as possible. Like the airport could block out the rain.

I shook my head at these people and glanced down the long road towards the highway. The airport was a distance from town, but I knew I could walk it. I just really did not want to. Especially not with this freakish rain or the strange behaviour of people around me.

“Man, I must have missed something.” I mumbled to myself.

“Missed something?” A teenage boy to my left spoke up to me. “Is that why you’re standing out in that?”

“In the rain?” I asked, before turning to look at him.

“Yeah… you definitely missed things. Have you not been watching the news?”

“No, I haven’t been watching the weather.”

“No. The news.” The teen whipped out his phone faster than I could speak. A few thumb presses later and he had turned it for me to see.

The video clip was from some news program in Europe. The accent made me think that it was England, but I focused more on what I was seeing.

Things were moving through the streets of whatever town that was.

I had no description for them other than ‘thing’. They looked slightly like animals I had seen in books or on television, but all of them were somehow wrong. Some had extra limbs. Others had extra mouths. All of them were bigger than they should be.

“Oh sure. Real funny, kid.” I said with a shake of my head.

“It’s not a joke.” The teen said as he shook his head in turn. “Everywhere that rain falls, the animals change.”

He quickly took his phone back, only to shove it back in my face once more. This time, there was a new video.

“Paris.” He said before he swiped to a new video. “New York.” Another swipe and another video. “Edmonton.”

Each video showed the same thing. Creatures that should not exist.

It was like some crazy movie that had suddenly become much too real.

I pulled out my own phone and quickly searched up the news on my own. It was not long before I found a lot more articles than just the ones he had shown me. Some were even worse. Especially the one video that showed a man being dragged off into the woods by something with way too many teeth.

“What… the fuck?” I mumbled to myself.

“Yeah, so every time the rain has arrived, things go to shit.” The teen said before glancing towards the growing line of people.

“I… this makes no sense.” I was still mumbling. “I gotta get home. My parents…”

I knew I had to get to my family. My parents and my brother were somewhere out there. They had to be waiting for me. To call or to get home. I knew they had to be out there.

“Well, good luck with that.” The teen shrugged. “Most people are trying to get out of the country. My dad wants me to meet up with him in some little European country.”

I looked over at the teen. He did not even seem to be batting an eye as he talked about all this.

“Doubt I’ll get a plane out, though.” He continued. “It seems like most of the planes are grounded.”

“Uh… well… thanks for the info.” I managed before turning to look towards the road once more.

I really did not want to walk that distance. I was already jetlagged enough from the plane ride in.

“Hey! Ava, is that you?” A voice shouted out to me.

I turned in that direction to see a slightly familiar face. The man who was jogging towards me was my age and I was about ninety percent sure that he was someone I went to High School with. Maybe he was from college. I just could not remember.

“Uh… hi… you!” I just could not remember his name.

“You trying to get out of the country?” He asked with a bright smile.

“No, trying to get home.” I answered with a small laugh. “Unfortunately, there are not many taxis running.”

“Oh?” He tilted his head before nodding repeatedly. “Hey, I’m heading into town myself. I just came here to drop off my aunt. You still live in that cheap little apartment on Seventh?”

“Yeah.” I responded with my own nod.

Some instinct was screaming at me that I should say no and ignore this former classmate. That I should find some other way to get home. That this was going to be one of the worst choices I had made in a while.

It was just overridden by the desire to get home.

The teen looked at me with a cautious expression, as if he was trying to say something. In the end, he remained silent. He merely grunted and strode inside the airport building.

“So, yeah, just come along with me.” My classmate said with a small but happy smile. “We’ve got a lot to catch up on. You still planning on attending that other college on the west coast?”

“I sure am. What about you?” I asked, probing for information on just who this person was.

All the while, I followed him to his car. Thankfully, it was nothing amazing. Just the typical four-door sedan a normal person owns. As we walked, he elaborated on his plans. About how he was going to join his father’s business after taking another management course.

We both got in the car at nearly the same time. He drove out of the airport parking lot with the practiced ease of a long-time driver. I kept my backpack on my lap. I still made conversation with him and, eventually, I remembered this guy had been the boyfriend of one of my friends.

He was a relatively quiet guy, but not so quiet as to be serial killer material. Just someone who was more focused on schoolwork than he had been on people. Unfortunately, that made him a virtual non-entity in my head. It had also been the reason why he had broken up with my friend. Not that it really mattered. Right now, he was just the guy who was going to get me from Point A to Point B.

I probably would never see him again after this drive. And not just because of going to the west coast to get away from this tiny little town.

We were about halfway to the city when I realized I should have listened to that instinct. The car gave a slight jerk, and I turned to swear at him. Only I got to watch as he suddenly began to change.

I say ‘change’, but it was like watching John Carpenter’s The Thing. That one scene where the guy’s body cavity opened to reveal a gaping maw. My classmate did his own messed up version of that.

One moment, both of his arms looked normal. Shoulders, elbows, and normal looking hands on the wheel. Then his shoulder opens like a mouth that splits open where his collarbone should be. Jagged teeth that looked more like bits of bone than real teeth. A tongue–that far longer than it should be–reached towards me like some manner of disturbing rope.

That video of the guy being dragged into the woods repeated in my head. I was certain this was the moment of my death.

That thought only lasted a brief second before I slammed my backpack against the tongue. I knew there was little that was going to do, but I had to do something, anything else, to escape whatever it was this guy was becoming. I just had nothing that I could attack it with.

In a moment of panic, I shoved open the door and dove out of the moving car.

I hit the road hard. Bouncing several times before coming to a stop. I stared up at the cloudy sky and could feel myself getting pelted with those little crystal bits of rain.

Perhaps I was lucky. Somehow, I did not land hard on the pavement and ended up on the soft turf alongside the road. I was going to be bruised, but I did not feel like anything had broken. 

Or maybe it was unlucky when I watched the car swerve before it stopped.

I spit blood on the ground as I watched my classmate get out of the car. His shoulder had swollen up in a grotesque bubble that had seemingly merged with his head. Only one eye was still visible, and he still had his first mouth. Those two mouths were open. Elongated tongues flicking in the air like a snake.

I tried to push past the pain and get to my feet.

I knew I had to run away.

It was just that everything ached, and I still felt dizzy from the hard impact. There was blood in my mouth, and I briefly wondered if I had busted something internally.

I got to my feet just as something came out of the woods.

Staring at it, my mind felt like it was short circuiting. It was massive, easily four times the height of human and with the bulky width to match. Dark fur covered most of its body with much thicker fur in certain places. Four arms ended in clawed hands that were easily bigger than my torso. A head that was somewhere between a wolf and a deer turned towards my classmate.

But I saw the eyes before it turned. While I did not get a chance to count, I knew it had way more than a pair of eyes.

Wendigo.

The name came to mind before I had a chance to even think. Fear quickly overrode every other sense as I stared at it. It looked so much more horrific than the creatures I had seen on my phone. Maybe it was because I was seeing it in person.

Regardless, I got to my feet and turned to run away.

It was like everything happened in slow motion and I witnessed every single thing. I could see the bigger monster grab my classmate. I saw the shoulder-mouth try to bite the creature’s hand. Those jagged teeth managed to dig in. The larger creature seemed to scowl in annoyance.

I watched the creature open its mouth like a snake distending its jaw. There were far more teeth than there should be as it bit down on the head of what had once been a person. Blood sprayed into the air and across the creature’s muzzle.

Time seemed to catch up with me then as I dashed away from the road. The turf quickly turned into gravel, and I stumbled at the change.

Crunch.

That sound echoed in my ears. It sounded almost like someone was eating a stick of celery. I just knew it was not celery. I just did not want to think of what it actually was.

The next sound that followed was something more wet. Something like tearing. Then there was more crunching.

I knew full well what was happening, but I did not want to look back.

Those sounds echoed behind me as I ran blindly into the forest.

There was no other plan or thought. Just a simple desire to get away from whatever that thing was.